Oh dear. I should comment that Mach 5 for the original is way optimistic. They were rated at 3.2, though supposedly 3.5 had been done. OXCART was a bit faster, but still in that range.
The general concept I can't really fault (and it's making me think of the X-15s) as... well, some of us have semi-legally acquired things of equivalent coolness *cough*Ptichka*cough* and between the A-12s and SR-71s, there's a fair number of them sitting around museums.
I'm uncomfortable with the fact that we sorta finally established "hard" mass/speed guidelines and what's being proposed completely blows them out of the water, though. Though considering how it's built, fairly high standard speedrive velocity (no matter how much of it's converted to drive, it's still 59,000 pounds dry) combined with gargantuan assloads of reaction mass relative to vehicle weight?
I just really don't like putting anything with speeddrives that far in excess of every single other thing out there, y'know? It leaves things open to people thinking "well, if something that cool looking can go that much faster than everything else, what if I come up with something even cooler/faster looking?" And I know someone will think of it because, well, I just did...![[Image: wink.gif]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/wink.gif)
The general concept I can't really fault (and it's making me think of the X-15s) as... well, some of us have semi-legally acquired things of equivalent coolness *cough*Ptichka*cough* and between the A-12s and SR-71s, there's a fair number of them sitting around museums.
I'm uncomfortable with the fact that we sorta finally established "hard" mass/speed guidelines and what's being proposed completely blows them out of the water, though. Though considering how it's built, fairly high standard speedrive velocity (no matter how much of it's converted to drive, it's still 59,000 pounds dry) combined with gargantuan assloads of reaction mass relative to vehicle weight?
I just really don't like putting anything with speeddrives that far in excess of every single other thing out there, y'know? It leaves things open to people thinking "well, if something that cool looking can go that much faster than everything else, what if I come up with something even cooler/faster looking?" And I know someone will think of it because, well, I just did...